Cox Plate winner Adelaide will have a summer break in the Hunter Valley before a possible tilt at the Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Randwick next April and maybe a return to Europe.
Coolmore Australia boss Tom Magnier was delighted to see Irish trainer Aidan O'Brien break his Australian duck and get his 231st group 1 victory on Saturday.
"He did an incredible job to have the horse there to run his best race at the Cox Plate," Magnier said. "This was a long-term goal and Adelaide completed the mission with plenty of weight and the team over in Ireland got it right. He has done a lot of travelling and it is a special job to keep him at his best and win a bucket-list race for us. Everyone is excited at what he has done. [The training effort] was only matched by a brilliant Ryan Moore ride."
Adelaide will head to Coolmore's Hunter Valley base in the next couple of days for a well-deserved break after eight starts for four wins and group 1 success in America and Australia. Magnier said connections would meet before Christmas to make a final decision on the future.
"He has had a hard season, so he will go to the farm this week and have a good break. After that we are not sure what will happen but we have plenty of time to talk about that," Magnier said. "It is great to be racing this horse with the Webbs, Murrays and the Inghams and we [will] sit down and all options have to be considered going forward."
It is believed Adelaide will join the Chris Waller stable for an autumn campaign but the lure of Royal Ascot and perhaps a start in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe in Paris looms large.
That could see Adelaide return to Ballydoyle and O'Brien. Adelaide, who is still only a three-year-old in Europe, was given a TImeform rating of 129 for his Cox Plate victory. Timeform's Gary Crispe believes it was one of the greatest performances around Moonee Valley by an immature horse with scope for improvement.
"He is still maturing and if you take a line throughout three-year-olds which have won the Cox Plate, he is clearly the best. Octagonal and So You Think could only get 125 in their wins," Crispe said. "He is behind the wins of So You Think as a four-year-old, Sunline and Might And Power but those performances came when those horses were at their best. There is so much room for improvement with Adelaide. It will be good to see what he can do after a spell."
Several runners set new Timeform bests in the Cox Plate, including runner-up Fawkner and Side Glance.
Fawkner has reportedly come through his Cox Plate run all right and will head to the Melbourne Cup. Lloyd Williams' star stumbled and went down on his nose in the first couple of strides but made Adelaide earn his victory.
Fawkner, along with Lucia Valentina, are looming as the main Australian-trained hopes of preventing an international clean sweep of the three majors after Japan's Admire Rakti won the Caulfield Cup.
While it is unclear where Adelaide's racing future will take him, he has assured himself a place at stud.
"It is great to have a son of Galileo come over here and show his best," Magnier said. "He has secured his future and has hopefully finished the myth that Galileo can't get a horse over here. For obvious reasons it was important for him as a stallion to get a win like that and it should make him very popular when he goes to stud here."
